Sesame Street, The Berlin Wall, and Jesus

Today marks the 40th anniversary of Sesame Street.
That wonderful creation that has helped educate scores of children through the years. I must admit I don't really remember watching Sesame Street growing up as a kid. I preferred things like Scooby-Doo, Tom and Jerry, Jabber Jaws, Yogi Bear, and of course The Three Stooges. As a parent I have grown very fond of Sesame Street for the way that it has helped my girls learn and develop. I know that the experts say children shouldn't watch TV until after age 2, but seriously what parents who aren't Amish do this? In fact there are some shows on PBS that I can't stand not because I'm the reincarnation of Jerry Falwell and his disdain for Teletubbies....no they just plain get on my nerves. Sesame Street and Curious George are among the ones I can tolerate the best! Although every time I catch an episode of Curious George it happens to be one I've seen like five times. There's a lot to be said with the lack of response from churches to incorporate the media in all of it's forms in reaching the new generations for the sake of the gospel. I don't mean broadcasting Miss Pattycake or The Old Time Gospel Hour...I mean embracing the changing climate of technology in order to facilitate the methodology of sharing theology with a lost and dying world.

On a different note, yesterday was the 20th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall. What a milestone for Capitalism and freedom! I was listening to the Rick and Bubba show this morning in the car and they were talking about how for people my age and younger the Berlin Wall is "an obscure thing that happened somewhere over there." I think there's a lot of truth to that statement. The Wall of course represented everything that Americans stood against. The Wall was a visual reminder of the Cold War and the effects that it had on us as a nation and the rest of the world. I confess that my knowledge of Communism, at least of the U.S.S.R. variety is less shaped by history and reality and more shaped by epic films of the 1980s, like Rocky IV (you know, the one where he fights the Russian and defeats not only the Russian but in a small way Soviet Socialism) and Red Dawn (the one staring Patrick Swayze and Charlie Sheen that recounts the fictional invasion of America by Communist countries, specifically Cuba and Russia).


I guess ultimately, though the Berlin Wall for me represents throwing off the shackles of whatever it is that holds you down. For many that could be a crooked government, God knows we have had plenty of those in the last 100 years. For some it is the burden of illiteracy, literally millions of Americans are illiterate, that's not just something that keeps you from getting a PhD. That impacts your everyday life of going to the store, reading the newspaper, checking people's Facebook updates. Still for others the Wall represents things like alcoholism, drug addiction, materialism, abuse of various kinds. For Christ followers, it represents anything including some of the things mentioned above that are tied so tight around our necks they are squeezing the life out of us. True freedom is available though, if indeed that is truly what we want.